Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Remember that whole scandal about the use of political litmus tests and the purging of long time public servants for right-wing hacks at the Justice Department? Well, Attorney General Michael Mukasey- THE NATIONS CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER- doesn't think any crimes were committed, and if there were crimes, they probably weren't big enough to prosecute anyways.

In a speech Tuesday morning to the American Bar Association in New York, Mr. Mukasey acknowledged that some critics and commentators have called on the Justice Department to take what he called “more drastic steps” in dealing with the scandal, including prosecuting those at fault and firing those hired through flawed procedures.

“Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” he said. “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” he said. As the inspector general’s report acknowledged, the hiring violations were such a case, because the wrongdoing violated federal civil service law, but not criminal law, he said.

“That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences,” Mr. Mukasey said. “Far from it. The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity."

Oh, boo-hoo, the officials who treated hiring at the Justice Department like it was new pledge night at the TKE house got some bad publicity, we feel so sad for them. These people, and Mukasey himself, should be behind bars.

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